Google's mysterious new operating system looks completely different from Android

AP
Details about Google's new mystery operating system, Fuchsia, appeared on Ars Technica on Tuesday and give us a better idea of what Fuchsia is for.

Based on Ars Technica's findings, Fuchsia is designed to work on "modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors" with "non-trivial amounts of RAM." That seems like an odd move for Google, as Android runs perfectly well on budget devices with lesser specs. It's usually third-party apps that require speedy components to perform at their best.

We have seen that Fuchsia is built from the ground up and based on Google's Magenta kernel instead of the Linux kernel Android is based on. A kernel is the core of an operating system that the basic functions are built from. A kernel is like an empty house (Linux) that the tenant (Google) can furnish to work, look, and feel the way it wants. By building a kernel, Google has more control over what its OS can do.

Check out Ars Technica's screenshots of Fuchsia to get a look at Google's new OS. In the meantime, I've compiled a few screenshots from YouTube user Kyle Bradshaw, who uploaded a video on Wednesday showing Fuchsia running on a mobile device.

Fuchsia doesn't necessarily have a home screen with app icons as we know it, like Android or iOS.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

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Instead of app icons, apps take up rectangular sections of the screen. There still seems to be a home button on the bottom center of the screen.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

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It looks like a vertically oriented user interface, where you swipe up and down to navigate the OS and apps.

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Opened apps appear to hover above the Fuchsia OS rather than take up the entire screen.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

Usually, when we open an app on Android or iOS, it takes up the entire screen and replaces the OS. In Fuchsia, it looks like the app is more of an overlay on the OS, judging by the gray bar below the orange email app.

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Here's another example of apps and settings feeling like an overlay hovering on the OS.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

This seems to be Fuchsia's quick settings, which we'd normally find in Android's notifications shade.

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The time and battery indicator are on the bottom instead of the top, where you'd normally see them on Android.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

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At one point, the familiar Android notifications bar and on-screen buttons appear at the top and bottom, but it's unlikely that will be part of Fuchsia.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

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It isn't surprising to find Google Assistant running in Fuchsia.

YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

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Here's Bradshaw's video of Fuchsia running on a mobile device:

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To be clear, little is still currently known about Fuchsia.

Little is known about Fuchsia, including big questions like whether it's designed to replace Android. Even its release is up in the air, as several of Google's projects never see the light of day. A Fuchsia developer, however, told Ars Technica that Fuchsia "isn't a toy thing. It's not a 20% project. It's not a dumping ground of a dead thing that we don't care about anymore."